Smart Bombs: Safe spaces can be defensible

The concept of “safe spaces” on college campuses is under siege because some misguided students at Missouri and Yale have tossed retrograde ingredients into a progressive recipe.

On the very day University of Missouri students with legitimate complaints of racism forced an unresponsive president to resign, some retreated to a space where only the like-minded were welcomed. Those on the outside were stereotyped as the problem. The First Amendment was snubbed.

However, the goal of creating an educational environment where people who have been pushed to the periphery can comfortably relate their experiences and ask for understanding is worth preserving. Call it “political correctness,” but it’s deeper than that malleable term.

Plenty of people who wear “political incorrectness” as a badge of courage create their own havens, collecting “news” from slanted websites or limiting their associations to ideologically or religiously correct groups. In that world, Republicans who dissent are “Republicans In Name Only.”

Some presidential candidates demanded shelter from “hostile” questions, and they were accommodated at Tuesday night’s debate. Their supporters had no problem mocking the sensitivity of college students, while building a wall around the “victims” vying to be the leader of the free world.

Hypocrisy aside, I’d like to defend a positive approach to safe spaces. The story begins last summer at parent orientation when the University of Washington student guides introduced themselves in a way I’d never heard.

“I’m Miranda Montlake (not a real name), a sophomore in biology, and I prefer the pronoun ‘her.’ ”

On the surface, it seemed a politically correct exercise in stating the obvious. Down deeper, it reflects another shift in the culture, which is always more disconcerting to adults than young people.

Ask college students today about diversity, gay marriage, interracial dating, immigration, mass transit, bike lanes, global warming, contraception, video games, tattoos and music, and most can’t fathom the hypersensitivity of their elders.

Who can blame them for mentally gift-wrapping chill pills as they read their parents’ social media feeds? If, indeed, Christmas can survive.

When I told my teenage daughter about the preferred-pronoun introductions, I got a different reaction than when I told friends. She said it sounded like a thoughtful nod to the diversity of people and a sensitivity to what they prefer to be called.

Took the “bah” right out of the “humbug.” So let’s delve deeper.

Traditionally, we say “she” for a woman and “he” for a man. But to make colleges safe spaces for people whose gender identity doesn’t align with their appearance, students may be encouraged to announce their preferred pronoun to remove the guesswork.

There were no surprises at the UW introductions, but no harm was done either. Awkward? Yes. Like the first time you heard “African American” or “Ms.”

These cultural shifts typically begin on college campuses, because they are quite properly incubators of new ideas and challengers of tradition. And we need laboratories for cultural experiments. Churches, workplaces and “home sweet home” tend to smash the beakers.

But the concept of “safe” has been twisted by college activists who claim young people need to be protected from uncomfortable words and ideas. That’s backward. Safe spaces should be where the voiceless can be heard respectfully, not shielded from dissent.

Encouraging students to seek shelter from the storm might seem compassionate, but it won’t build strength. And it certainly won’t lead to change.

Same goes for the sensitive souls running for president and their quick-to-offend enablers.

Associate Editor Gary Crooks can be reached at garyc@spokesman.com or (509) 459-5026. Follow him on Twitter @GaryCrooks.